| As with most programming jobs the best skill you can foster is how to research, learn and apply technologies. The tools and popular frameworks change about every 3 years. (As a web dev since 96 I feel qualified enough to say.) That said, fundamentals are key. Learn/brush up on standard Javascript and CSS before diving into the current frameworks. ES6 Javascript has a lot to offer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STZuv-27d9M and the Grid/Flex options in CSS can allow you to create a variety of complex layouts in a fairly quick way. https://www.css-tricks.com On top of that, it does everyone good to understand web accessibility concerns and implement them from the start of each project (far easier than trying to retrofit things later). Once you have a firm handle on those things, you can better evaluate frameworks and libraries. You may find that you won't need all the overhead that comes with helpful libraries if you have a specific use case that standard js/css can solve. I spend a lot of my time reading documentation/github issues for a variety of things (node, drupal, wordpress, hugo, frameworks, php, javascript, docker, vagrant, bash) and parsing how that info can help me integrate the tools and programs I use everyday. If documentation doesn't exist, I try to create my own barebones doc with links to info I've found and a list of questions to research later. Web Dev, for me, has been all about solving puzzles, finding solutions, and sometimes simply discovering the right terms to search for. This continuous learning process can feel like I'm starting from scratch over and over (and feeling like I know nothing each time ;) ), but lessons learned from previous projects usually make future ones easier to learn/identify problem areas. It's good to embrace that uncertainty.
There is so much out there to learn, no one can know it all, but if you can learn to identify good mentors, quickly parse documentation and apply current best practices you'll do just fine. |
Not all things have stood still, that said the frameworks are definitely still around, and barring a relatively few breaking changes, the past 3-5 years have been relatively stable now. Yeah, you can do react functional components with hooks, but the class syntax still works.